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No, the New York Times Did Not Prove FBI Did Not Rely on Russia ‘Dossier’

The New York Times reported Saturday that the Russia investigation began in 2016 after George Papadopoulos, a junior foreign policy aide in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, told an Australian diplomat in May 2016 that Russia had “political dirt” on Hillary Clinton.

The Australians, the Timesreported, informed the U.S. about Papadopoulos’s claim two months later, after hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee were released — i.e. in July 2016.

The Times story is being treated as a “bombshell” by the mainstream media and the left. But the Times fails to account for reports that the Obama administration first sought a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court to monitor Trump associates in June 2016. That warrant was, unusually, denied, which suggests that it may, in fact, have been based on the flimsy accusations in the “dossier.”

Furthermore, as Byron York of the Washington Examiner notes, it is not clear that the “dirt” Papadopoulos was taking about referred to the DNC emails, but could well have referred to the 30,000 “missing” emails that Hillary Clinton had deleted from her illicit private email server.. – READ MORE